Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present disclosure generally relate to radar systems, and more specifically relate to multiple chirp generation in a radar system.
Description of the Related Art
Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) automotive radar systems transmit and receive parameterized frequency-modulated signals commonly referred to as chirps. Many such radar systems are implemented using mostly analog circuits with a programmable digital timing engine for configuring chirps. Typically, the parameter values of a chirp to be transmitted are written by a software program to a set of parameter registers in the timing engine. Typical applications of automotive radar systems require that the radar systems transmit a “burst” or sequence of chirps (which may be referred to as a “frame”) with minimal time gap between the chirps. A frame of chirps may include a large number (e.g., 256 or 512) of chirps, each of which may have different parameter values. To avoid allocating the large area of silicon that would be needed to have one set of parameter registers for each chirp in a frame, current radar systems typically have a few (e.g., 2-4) sets of chirp parameter registers that are used by the software program in a round-robin fashion. Thus, the software that is setting the parameters for the chirps is required to continuously operate in real-time to configure parameters of a subsequent chirp while a current chirp is transmitted.